It looks like Pioneer is aborting their plasma display unit due to financial losses and other big electronics companies will probably follow:

source
Long live LCD

This is strange because my family owns both a 50 inch plasma and a 40 inch LCD, and the plasma easily blows the lcd out of the water when it comes to picture quality. I'm amazed at the lack of plasma adoption out there.

the reason for this is cause you have a 50 inch plasma.

above 42 inch, Plasmas are generally better quality than LCDs.

However, that won't explain why there is a quality difference between 50 and the 40. How old is your 40 inch and what res does it support. it could very well just be that your LCD model is inferior to your plasma.

they're not the only one making plasma r they?

We have owned a 50" plasma and currently own a 52" LCD, the LCD easily owns the plasma, there is nothing I dislike more than a screen with an ugly glare, glass screens suck big time. LCD wins no prob.

I have both Plasma and LCD, and also prefer the Plasma.

When I watch a movie I turn the lights off, so screen glare is not a problem.

With LCD, if sitting too close, I can still notice a lil bit of motion blurness. And Plasma is still better for reproducing deep blacks.

The lcd is a brand new Mitsubishi 1080p. The movements looks smeared almost. The plasma is far superior.

Plasmas are expensive to maintain.

And very easily destroyed. Watch one channel for too long and you've got the network's watermark burned into your screen.

Yeah if you bought your plasma in 2004. I play COD4 on mine all the time and watch a shitload of tv and never have I seen even a trace of burn in.

Yeah. We've had ESPN just on for days at a time with our plasma, no burn-in.

Plasma vs LCD is truly in the eye of the beholder. I was always under the impression that plasma was better for large screens and that LCD was better for smaller screens. Recently I looked at some 50' plasmas and LCD's next too each other in a store and have to admit the LCD looked clearer and sharper. Still Im going to really struggle when have to choose.

It helps if you know anything about the TV industry.

Pioneer produces the Kuro. Probably the single best Plasma or TV in general on the market.

The problem?

The prices usually hover between $4000 and $6000. Which makes the part you didn't quote... all the more important



Just like LCD there are crappy plasmas and great plasmas right around the $1200 and $2000 range. Pioneer likely can't compete.

Current generation plasmas have a life equal to that of an LCD. For every problem Plasmas have you have things like dead pixels on LCD TVs. It all comes down to your needs, habits, how picky you are.

The advantages of LCD are power consumption (slightly less), heat production (slightly less), and that it comes in slightly different sizes. It's also better for video games. Image wise, image blur is a problem, and also trying to find good black levels is hard. LCD are good up to 52 inch but beyond that kind of iffy. LCDs typically don't have a glass covering, so glare off the surface isn't a big deal, but can lead to a matty grey appareance. 120Hz LCDs are out now and cost about as much as the mid-level Plasmas, it fixes some of the motion blurry qualities. It's all about refresh rate... and your sources too.

The advantages of Plasma are picture quality, detail, color and black levels. They do not have refresh problems. Typically television fares a bit better on Plasma displays. Plasmas do well in large sizes (especially if you have a good HD player attached). The issues with plasma are not image burn, but image retention, where subtle ghosting can happen if you have it on the screen for awhile, but it is temporary. Image burn was a huge problem in the late 1990s and early part of the 2000s but hasn't been a major problem for 4-5 years. Part of it is the way Plasma was fixed, and now they even have pixel shifting and image retention options to calibrate your TV every once in awhile.

Although I game too, movies are my prime TV function. No question for me, plasma has the black levels that I want and need.

Thanks for that roo. There is a minefield of mis-information out there and its good to read an informative pro/con summary like that.

I think what that also indicates is that plasma is far from RIP as the thread title suggests.

If you really want to stay away from a dying technology stay away from DLP or digital projection (although large projection systems never will go away). We're talking about the cabinets that are not flat screen TVs.

Price is affordable, but the bulb in the TV needs to be replaced every three years... that bulb is expensive without a good replacement program, which will also cost you.

IMO, the picture quality of them goes

1. Plasma
2. DLP
2. LCD

Not to disparage LCD purchases, I almost bought one myself.

Plasma and LCD are still very much in development on all fronts. For example, at CES 2008 Panasonic produced some concept ultra-thin Plasmas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erBuFC4Bj9o

I always pick the LCD if I compare it side-by-side to the plasma...

LCD rocks! ...especially this latest generation.

wait for OLED. it should go mainstream next year.

You do realize the screen is only 11 inches. Sony has yet to make then really big.

Sony isn't the only company working on OLED. We're about 4-5 years away from it being cheap and easy and big enough for the retail mainstream market.

Does it stand for Optical Light Emitting Diodes?

Organic light-emitting diode.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_li ... ting_diode

Still waiting for Laser TV's...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_tv